


And When Your Fantasies Become Your Legacy

by mymindsofar



Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Bucky Barnes Needs a Hug, Captain America: Civil War (Movie) Spoilers, Confessions, Cryostasis, Gen, M/M, Saying Goodbye is hard, Steve Rogers Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 17:50:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6764038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mymindsofar/pseuds/mymindsofar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky is scared. Rightfully, but unmistakably and unnervingly scared of what he will do. And he certainly will. His determination keeps fascinating Steve; from the day he got his draft, to his orders, to holding the rifle by Steve’s right side; irrelevant of whether he liked the situation he was in, he would not bow to the challenge. The move isn’t a surrender; they both know Bucky will never live a day behind bars again, given they were not arranged by himself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And When Your Fantasies Become Your Legacy

Bucky smiles at him. It aches like an icepick slowly being shoved into Steve’s ribcage and dragged down along his middle, ripping apart the last pieces holding him together.

Selfish thoughts threaten to overrule him, but he tells himself he understands what Bucky is going through. He’s been selfish enough over the past few weeks, and Bucky is exactly what he put as the center of his motivations. It makes sense that after dragging him around for so long, he must pay his respect by showing him he trusts Bucky with his own decisions.

“You haven’t really left that Frisbee for good, have you?” Bucky asks after a while. Steve winces, the sound of the shield hitting the floor still echoing in the back of his mind. His eyes wander with imbued apprehension towards the glass cage that resembles too closely the one the other super soldiers have found their deaths in. Like the one where Bucky himself has been stored, like a tool. Steve knows nothing in the world could push _him_ towards going back into the ice, he’s a kicker and a fighter, but he doesn’t blame Bucky. (Steve was always present when he committed his crimes.)

Scientists and engineers are jumping around the device, pushing buttons and taking notes. Last steps.

Steve shakes his head. “I’ve written Tony a letter, it’s a truce of some sorts. Things have become messy, nothing that can’t be fixed,” he says, and he prays that it doesn’t bleed through that Tony is not the only one he wishes he could reach with those words. He doesn’t have any right to say it, though.

He extends his left hand to reach out for the one Bucky has left, and it falls into his like a raindrop dissolving in the soil. He wishes he could soak Bucky up, make sure he would never escape him again.

“You won’t stop being the Captain until you die,” Bucky intends as a joke, but it falls through.

“I guess so,” he replies, evading to discuss the implication of those words. Bucky knows that the Captain didn’t make Steve, that he was a perseverant son of a bitch long before the war. You could go as far as saying the reverse is true. Now, do the clothes make the man or not?

The cryo chamber isn’t magically disappearing the way Steve would like it to. _I remember every last one of them_.

Bucky had two years to gather whatever memory he could grasp on, and sheer statistics alone guaranteed that a good accumulation of that would have had to be what makes one’s worst nightmares laughable. Bucky blames himself for all of it. Steve doesn’t want him to go into it as a punishment, a way to re-enter the only time over the last seventy years he could salvage some peace. It’s not a twisted version of Stockholm syndrome, right? If being frozen was still better than slaughtering and obeying to the worst of the worst, it could almost be a fair trade.

“Got something for you. It’s not a good parting gift, but I came late for the movie and dragged you along for a double date before I shipped off, so I’ve done worse,” Bucky says, and Steve does his best not to cringe. He knits his eyebrows instead, knowing the self-deprecation is coming from a good place.

Bucky gets to the bag that somehow made its way here, too, and Steve is sure it only surprises him because he hasn’t been paying too much attention to it. He doesn’t take the whole thing, though, and Steve is not sure he can, or will look into its remaining contents once…

His hand comes out with the black notebook Steve had a glance over, the one with his Smithsonian portrait glued into it.

“A memory would spark and I’d write it down, sometimes just fragments to come back to me later. I couldn’t make proper sense of why you were in almost every memory that felt good.” Steve lowers his gaze at the notebook, reaching for it not _too_ eagerly, but he clutches it tight. Another ghost to keep for him.

“Don’t get me wrong, the old guy got into some pretty steamy situations without your participation, though…” Steve’s amused by Bucky bringing up his escapades with the dames, but his eyes shoot up when he trails off unexpectedly.

“Though what?”

Bucky shakes his head. “’s just, some part of me wishes you’d also... It’s complicated. Believe it or not, it’s not a hundred-percent fog-free up there.”

“Couldn’t have deduced that on my own,” Steve says, looking at the menacing machine on the other side of the glass, behind the small waiting room they’re sitting in. Extreme measures. Usually, that’s more Steve’s style. Bucky’s face is inexplicably red, and it takes a moment for the words to hit.

“Buck…”

“It’s him, not… I don’t know, really. A feeling,” he adds, struggling to make a proper excuse for his words.

“No, it’s… fine.” Steve has to take a moment to digest that, and it paralyzes him. The idea of Bucky having had feelings for him that were beyond friendship was never something he thought could be much more than a pipe dream he’s been living all his life. “Would you like to… tell me more?”

Bucky chuckles awkwardly. “It’s hardest to distinguish memories from dreams I’ve had in the past, because… They’re just as incoherent. I’m missing important pieces, something to make the entire puzzle fit. And I couldn’t distinguish for the longest time which part was and wasn’t real between us. The Smithsonian doesn’t exactly wave around Captain America’s sexuality, and with the way things were back then… I’ve filed it under dreams. It just seemed more likely.”

Steve takes a long, deep breath. Bucky confessed to him, and it only took him a good chunk of a century. Then Steve tilts his head forward. “You’re right, yes. But you weren’t the only one with those dreams,” Steve replies. He would say I love you ( _I loved you when we were throwing rocks into the Hudson to see which one got farther I loved you when you bought the bear for Dot and when your skin blistered and dried from the hot sunny days at the docks and I loved you when I felt your arm unconsciously move around my waist in the cold nights you tried to breathe a little heat into my failing body and oh God did I-_ ) but he can’t. He can’t play with Bucky like that. It would be nothing but the truth, but it’s not something Bucky needs to know, it’s still true even if it’s not said directly, Steve hopes, and hates it that this is not the time, still.

_Will it ever be?_

“That’s good to know,” Bucky replies, voice slightly shaken. Steve feels the right corner of his mouth twitch. Bucky reaches out slowly, carefully, and places his right hand on Steve’s shoulder with more care than when there was the possibility that his bones _could_ break under his touch. And then his head sinks onto Steve’s shoulder, who tries to focus away from the overwhelming contact, closer than they had been since they took off their uniforms, closer than they had been in such an awful long time, and sinks back against the wall with a sigh. He dully reminds himself that this isn’t going to fix anything, that this confession is nothing other than another fact to file away to break apart later. He knows that Bucky isn’t ready to act on that, and it isn’t enough to deter him from freezing himself to near-death once again.

Steve shifts gently towards him and puts an arm around Bucky, who pulls himself closer in return. Bucky’s heart is beating and it’s there and he’s alive and he loved him and Steve will have to let him go again. And there he thought there would be an end to the chase of the century, that he would get to be home for five fucking minutes.

God took Peggy, and never fully allowed him to have Bucky back in the first place.

“We’ll get there someday, Buck,” Steve says, with a certainty that scares him a little. Bucky seems to scoffs underneath him. Steve can’t certainly define the sound he makes. “We’ll make a home, like it’s supposed to be.”

“You are,” Bucky replies, clears his throat, and repeats, “you are my home, pal,” in a way that is so unmistakably Bucky, Steve wants to cry the same way he wanted to in the abandoned warehouse, with his heart crushing into itself like the newspapers Bucky had been talking about.

“Always will be,” Steve replies and presses his lips on Bucky’s forehead. Bucky is scared. Rightfully, but unmistakably and unnervingly scared of what he will do. And he certainly will. His determination keeps fascinating Steve; from the day he got his draft, to his orders, to holding the rifle by Steve’s right side; irrelevant of whether he liked the situation he was in, he would not bow to the challenge. The move isn’t a surrender; they both know Bucky will never live a day behind bars again, given they were not arranged by himself.

It was Bucky’s idea, after all. His decision to put the conflict quite literally on ice, to make sure the Avengers could reunite when the time would need them to without standing in the way. Steve is not innocent in causing this outcome; he helped the situation escalate as much as it did, and now he has to bear with the consequences. Bucky gives up so that Steve doesn’t have to, and yet the outcome is all the same. ( _Will I ever stop failing you, Buck?_ )

“I wish you had been more selfish sometimes,” Steve mutters into Bucky’s plain, white shirt. Unfitting for his temporary burial, ironic, almost comical.

“I have been. About everything that came down to you, really. Couldn’t leave you to meet your end by yourself out there in the field, not then, not last week,” Bucky argues. That’s the exact opposite of what Steve – “I wanted to be there in case you died on me,” Bucky clarifies. That shuts Steve up for a second.

“What was that? That little guy…”

“From Brooklyn. Always following that stupid fucker.” They both fall into a quiet, gentle laugh.

T’Challa opens the door to the room Steve dreads so much. “We are ready,” he says, and Steve sees the staff disappear, all but two remain in the room. Bucky gets up first as Steve’s knees feel weak like it’s 1937 all over, but he does follow him.

Bucky takes just a moment in front of the white, clean-looking tube, examines it with his own eyes before he steps forward.

“Are you sure about this?” Steve asks, because just once, he really has to give him the chance to get out of this. God knows Steve will find another way to keep him safe. There won’t be another failure.

Bucky nods. “I can't trust my own mind,” he replies, coolly, and then it all happens so quickly. His face grows stiff in seconds, reminding Steve too acutely of the nightmares since he read Дело No.17, his head creative enough to come up with the details, down to the last thoughts Bucky had before they turned him solid again.

He leaves right after, the notebook pressed closely to his chest and all those memories held dear, the good as hard as the bad.


End file.
